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THE GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANY

Israel: Calculation Could Backfire If Incorrect

Summary

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the leading dove in Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet, has been sidelined just before
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's scheduled arrival. Peres
has been reluctant to defy U.S. demands to halt operations in
Palestinian areas. Sharon, however, has read the diplomatic tea
leaves and determined that although the United States is bowing
to international pressure for a peace mission, it is willing to
give him time to complete military operations successfully.
Sharon's line of reasoning has several potential defects,
however.

Analysis

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has put off his arrival in
Israel as long as possible. He has traveled through Morocco,
Egypt and Spain, and there are now unconfirmed rumors that he is
planning to stop off in Rome before finally heading for Israel.

Israeli leaders have done nothing that would make his visit
easier. Despite being told nearly a week ago that Powell was
coming -- and that all that was expected was the beginning of a
military withdrawal from Palestinian areas -- Israel has given no
sign that it intends to comply. If Powell does indeed go to
Israel, it will be into an unabated firestorm rather than into a
situation that is in the process of winding down.

This has created an incipient crisis in Israel's Cabinet.
Leftists serving in the inner "kitchen" Cabinet, primarily
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, have been moved aside for
rightists more to the liking of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Obviously, serious tensions have developed over the course of the
war. Sharon appears to have had substantial support for the
initial phases of the current operation. There was a general
consensus in Israel that radical steps had to be taken to stop
the suicide bombings, but the Israeli end game was never clear.

Peres undoubtedly wanted to see the operation winding down by the
time Powell arrived. For Peres, no purely military settlement is
possible, and any military operation must segue into diplomacy.
From his viewpoint, alienating the United States would be
extremely dangerous. Clearly, Peres' arguments inside the
decision-making nexus of Israeli policy had become sufficiently
divisive that Sharon was prepared to shift the structure of the
inner Cabinet rather than deal with the division.

Sharon has a very different view of the situation. He is not
convinced that there is a danger of a break with the United
States. Sharon was undoubtedly struck by the fact that more than
a week would elapse between the time Powell's trip was announced
and his actual arrival. For him, this was a clear signal from the
United States that while it was bowing to international pressure
for a peace mission, it did not regard such a mission as urgent.
Put differently, Washington was content to see Israel complete
its military operations successfully.

For Sharon, the key here was not time, but rather the United
States' willingness to give Israel sufficient time for the
operation to reach its objectives. From Sharon's reading of the
situation, it followed that a successful conclusion to the
operation was more important to the United States than a quick
conclusion. Therefore, despite the imminence of Powell's arrival,
Sharon is more concerned with the state of the operation than he
is with Powell's visit and, for better or worse, he believes that
the United States is secretly in line with his thinking.

From Sharon's perspective, the United States and Israel share the
same enemy: militant Islam. The same forces that carry out
attacks in Israel carry out attacks in the United States. The
Arab world has united in rejecting U.S. plans to attack Iraq. In
effect, the Arab world has blocked the U.S. strategy to fight
Islamic threats. Therefore, the United States is now objectively
in the same position, facing the same enemy, as Israel. It
therefore is logical to assume that Washington, entirely
reluctant to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis to begin
with, is not at all sincere in demanding an end to the war. From
Sharon's point of view, the war is implicitly sanctioned by the
United States; otherwise, the U.S. intervention would have been
earlier and far more aggressive.

Sharon is drawing a number of conclusions from this. First, given
the April 10 suicide bombing in Haifa, it is clear that the
Israeli military operation cannot be concluded in the next few
days. Second, given the threat from Hezbollah along the northern
frontier, it follows that Sharon will want to launch operations
there. Finally, although Gaza has been attacked in the past,
Israeli operations have yet to be staged there. It is unlikely
that Sharon will leave Gaza out of the equation.

Having committed himself to this course, the worst of all worlds
for Sharon would be to stop halfway. The diplomatic damage would
be done, but without achieving the military benefits. The fact
that Powell is coming to Israel does not, in his mind, represent
a significant event. To Sharon's thinking, Powell's visit was
designed not to be taken seriously by Israel. Powell will come,
he will meet with people -- including Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat -- and he will leave, allowing Israel to deal with the
situation.

This is not an unreasonable point of view, but it has several
potential defects. First, if the Palestinians can remount their
suicide attacks at nearly the same tempo of operations as before,
the Israeli consensus supporting the war could dissolve very
rapidly. Second, if Israel gets bogged down in an interminable
conflict in the West Bank and Lebanon, in which casualties mount
without any clear conclusion, his ability to continue the war
will be in doubt.

Finally, Sharon is assuming a great deal about the United States'
willingness to give Israel freedom of action. Clearly, Powell and
Washington have been prepared to give Sharon some room for
maneuver. However, Washington's primary concern remains al Qaeda,
and Powell's obsession remains the anti-al Qaeda coalition. If
the United States were to conclude that Israel's actions
genuinely, not rhetorically, threaten the United States' ability
to wage war -- in other words, if it turned out that Arab states
would cooperate with the United States against Iraq and al Qaeda
if it forced Israel to back off -- then Sharon's complacency
could backfire on him.

All of this leads Sharon to conclude that the operation must
continue as quickly and effectively as possible, on all fronts
necessary, in order to achieve its ends and conclude before the
United States really does get angry. Sharon understands Peres'
point, but he simply believes he has much more time and room for
maneuver.

Unless Powell brings a surprise to Israel -- assuming he ever
arrives -- Sharon may well be right.